Rome and the Making of a World State, 150 BCE-20 CE

Description

In the century following 150 BCE, the Romans developed a coherent vision of empire and a more systematic provincial administration. The city of Rome itself became a cultural and intellectual center that eclipsed other Mediterranean cities, while ideas and practices of citizenship underwent radical change. In this book, Josiah Osgood offers a new survey of this most vivid period of Roman history, the Late Republic. While many discussions focus on politics in the city of Rome itself, his account examines developments throughout the Mediterranean and ties political events more firmly to the growth of overseas empire. The volume includes a broad overview of economic and cultural developments. By extending the story well beyond the conventional stopping date of Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 BCE, Osgood ultimately moves away from the old paradigm of the fall of the Republic. The Romans of the Late Republic emerge less as the disreputable gangsters of popular imagination and more as inspired innovators.

Josiah Osgood is Professor of Classics at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, where he teaches Roman history and Latin literature. He has published numerous books and articles, including Caesar's Legacy: Civil War and the Emergence of the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 2006) and Turia: a Roman Woman's Civil War (2014). Osgood's academic interests include civil war, the figure of the Roman emperor, and ancient biography, historiography, and satire. He lives in Washington, DC.

'[Osgood]. has given an important new twist to the story of the fall of the Roman republic. His analysis will be widely welcomed.' Classics For All 'The whole of the book consists of less than 300 pages of highly journalistic prose that chronicles the life of the age in alternately animated details and general sketches. The novelist James Fenimore Cooper wrote that history is 'apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness ...' which if not true in general, is certainly true of this book. Household names like Julius Caesar, Pompey, Cleopatra, and Catullus appear in Technicolor-brightness alongside amusing-yet-unloved figures like the mythologist Parthenius of Bithynia and Caesar's early political rival Domitius Ahenobarbus. Largely, the book reads ... like a series of summaries for an action-packed TV series about the period, replete with engrossingly lurid details.' Michael Shindler, Providence 'This is well written, and an easy read even for those unfamiliar with Roman history and institutions in this period.' The NYMAS Review